


Porzellan

by PKA



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Multi, POV Second Person, Rigid Format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-17 14:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13078596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PKA/pseuds/PKA
Summary: Will becomes.





	1. Year One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feverdreambloodopera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverdreambloodopera/gifts).



> My fic from the Radiance Anthology.
> 
> Thanks to my wonderful beta [ fragile-teacup ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Mrs_Gene_Hunt/pseuds/fragile-teacup/) who had to endure so much and who helped me a lot at tweaking and honing down any needless words.  
> Thanks to [ bonearenaofmyskull ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverdreambloodopera/pseuds/feverdreambloodopera/) for... I don't know, existing? Actually reading this nonsense? And for reining in some over the top feels. I hope you enjoy the ending!  
> Thanks to all my friends who read this fic before I sent it in and listened to my endless moaning about it. Thanks especially to Navid, who came up with so many great ideas.  
> Thanks to [ lovecrimecat ](https://lovecrimecat.tumblr.com/) and[ allionne ](https://allionne.tumblr.com/) for bringing out such a wonderful book. Being part of this was a great experience and reading my name there, right at the start of the book, was both wonderful and horrifying.
> 
> Updates once a day. Each chapter should be exactly 1111 words long, but different programs count words differently, so this version is very slightly altered from the original Radiance piece.

The first year is hard.

When you find his notebook on the porch the morning after, full of calculations you don’t immediately understand, your first thought is whether it’ll be worth much on eBay once it all becomes public.

In the night, after your tears and the bottle of Jim Beam are emptied, you mourn. Mourn everything that is lost, mourn every glimpse you had of universes unsullied, where things ended differently. The palm of your hand presses against the wound on your forehead until the pain is all you’re feeling.

Jack calls you. You don’t pick up. You don’t do anything for days; just sit there in your bed, surrounded and filled by emptiness. There is the chair he sat in before you broke his monstrous, ugly heart. There are the beds of your loyal dogs, waiting to be occupied once more. You sit there, not eating, not sleeping, just watching, until you grow tired of the passivity.

Winston and the others are euphoric when they see you. You are too, just for a moment, before you think of him again. Kneeling in the snow, hands behind his head, car lights framing his face like that of a fallen angel, looking at you: wanton, desperate. As if you were the only thing that mattered in the world.

Jack wants you to testify. He’s buying you—you’re still receiving your salary and you will continue to do so if you do what they want you to do and shut up when you’re supposed to. Don’t contradict the official narrative. As if you’re planning to talk to the press.

You wonder what he’s doing. Whether he has come to regret his decision already.

You wonder not if he thinks of you—you know he does. You wonder if he will do it every day, forever, or if he will eventually forget you. Learn to spite you. You wonder if he prefers the you in his head, malleable and perfect, or if he will grow bored of his limited Memory Palace incarnation, unable to surprise him the way the real you could, always.

You avoid thinking about him. The trial doesn’t make it easy. When finally you stand in court, you do not look at him, not once. He’s staring at you all the while. The two of you, a connection through blade and handle. Your scar tugs and you ignore the urge to look down at your belly, to see if you are oozing blood at the very presence of him. When you leave, you pass him, sensing his breath on the back of your neck, sickly sweet. Like a corpse on a bed of flowers. You don’t look up, even if you should. You should give him this last glance, for it is likely the last he’ll get before he's locked away forever, but you don’t. You save yourself and walk on, hoping to be able to shut him out and end the power he has over you.

The nightmares return shortly after. Dreams of blood and breath, of teacups and time, of influence and indulgence. You revel in the high-pitched screams of your victims, deserving pigs in both your eyes. Thick red blood gushes out of their fragile, mortal bodies and you feast on them, anatomically and metaphysically, turning them into art. You make love to him under the moonlight after, two wolves in the thicket, hidden among the carnage of your making, but when you wake, and you always do no matter how much you fight it, your heart is pumping, your skin glistening with sweat. Bone-deep fear and arousal. You ache for him and you know that you must go. A little black sheep gone astray.

You think briefly of moving back to Louisiana, but that, too, has bad memories attached to it. You could visit dad, but that would only upset you. Last time you saw him, he didn't even recognize you anymore.

Once, before everything went down, you entertained the thought of taking him there sometime, showing him the places of your childhood. He would have understood. He always did.

After some consideration you buy an old, tumbledown house in the woods near Camden, Maine. It’s a small and quiet city, located by the sea and surrounded by lush, green hills. A place for people to relax. Entirely boring and entirely perfect. No one knows you here and you don’t try to make new friends. Once you are settled, you spend your days working on the house, fixing boat motors for rich Northeasterners on holiday, and going fishing, keeping busy until the night, when you drink enough to fall asleep. It’s a simple life and it’s almost, almost fine.

You don’t think about killing any more. At least you try not to. But every time you go into town, every time you witness the small everyday discourteousness that he would so despise, you see a flash of red. You're channeling him. It's not you. Because deep down you know that if you were to kill, you would not kill the rude. You would kill others like him. Like you.

One night, after a day at the harbor that has yielded no fish, you meet her at Cuzzy’s. You just want to grab a sandwich on your way home, but you end up staying. When she sees you she smiles at you and it feels like spring—the first ray of sun after a never ending winter—although autumn has been here for weeks.

She's on vacation with her son. Her husband died years ago, but the pain is still fresh behind her eyes. She asks if you are recently separated. Maybe you have that look. It takes you a moment to say no.

She has dogs at home, many of them. More than you do. She is slightly drunk and flirting and you fall for her laugh and the crinkles around her eyes and the way she says your name, devoid of the weight of prejudices and former conversations.

You meet again. You introduce her to the dogs. You let her in, just a little, and what she sees doesn’t frighten her. You don’t want to fuck this up, so you tell her what she needs to know and no more.

You kiss her and it feels like peace, the first taste of a normal life on her lips, far away from serial killers, from the Bureau, from him. She giggles and you smile before you kiss her again, all of it forgotten in her arms.

At the end of the year, before the first snow falls, you know that you are going to marry her.


	2. Year Two

The second year is harder.

You wonder if he misses you the way you miss him. Not a constant nagging in the back of your head anymore; just a thread that's pulled a few times a day. Even more painful—to be blessed with silence temporarily, only for the memories to come back later, unexpected.

She provides ample distraction.

After only a few months of toing and froing, you move up north to Moosehead Lake. A comfortable abode, wooden and secluded, right next to the lake. She introduces you to her hounds—an ugly bunch, barely recognizable as dogs—and you love them as your own instantly.

It’s perfect. She’s perfect. Your new life’s perfect. Every night, when you lie in bed beside her, listening to her soft, even breathing and the occasional snore, you fear that it'll be over soon, that your luck will run out, that he'll find a way to escape. Eventually, all good things come to an end.

Sometimes, when you go fishing—in your head or in reality—he joins you in the water. Standing by your side, three-piece suit and waders, looking at you like he did so often at the end, before he realized what you'd done. As if you were radiant. You have to force yourself to block him out, to lock the rooms you share with him. It’s easier to have him with you, the memory of him pleasant even, in that moment. But the ache gets worse from it, the longing all the more intense. You have to let go, to remind yourself that you'll never see him again.

You do see him again, weeks later, when in an especially bleak mood you find yourself browsing tattlecrime.com. You know you shouldn't, and yet you do. With every scroll of the mouse wheel you hate yourself a little more.

“Murder Husbands” she calls the both of you. Your eyes are fixed on the picture of him. You don’t remember a photo being taken, that night you ended it, but you wouldn’t be surprised if Freddie Lounds herself had stalked around your property, smelling money, waiting for disaster to happen. He looks exactly as you remember him, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.

Sudden memories overcome you, of the hours just before. Of him killing Cordell, cutting off his face while you could only lie there and watch him work. The predatory coldness in his eyes and the warmth after, two bloody bodies stumbling through the darkness, becoming one against the night’s backdrop. And then there’s Wolf Trap. Not a memory, but a hazy notion of him washing and dressing you, gentle hands lingering just a moment too long to be simply tending. Softly spoken words in his distinctive accent, the meaning of which you don’t recall anymore.

With a swallow, you delete your browser history, close the laptop and refill your glass. It’ll get easier, with more time and distance separating you. It has to. If only you can resist the temptation to hurt yourself further.

She doesn’t understand—she can’t, from what you’ve told her—but she's loving and kind and clever. Knowing too, but you don’t often let her think about it. You're good at taking her mind off things and she's good at it too. You marry her in a registry office, simple and without a fuss. No cake, no friends, no dancing. She says it’s fine—aware that no one you know would come. The smile on her face is real which is all that matters. Her ex-husband's parents come to visit a few weeks later. It’s awkward. That, too, is fine. This is marriage. This is normalcy. This is all you ever wanted.

Winter brings little fish, much work on the house and a half-dead moose on one of your longer walks through the woods. There's no way to help it—from the look of it, it’s old and dying from some illness. Chest lifting and lowering quickly, strained breathing destroying the silence. The dogs are excited and you hush them, keeping them away from the sick, yet dangerous animal. In the trees, crows are waiting for death to set in, for their share of the meal. Cassie Boyle, impaled on a stag’s head in the middle of a field—the first present he gave you, one of many. The feathered beast, dying on his kitchen floor—alongside Abigail, the last, the best present he wanted to give you. You've seen neither of them since you’ve been in Italy.

The moose is huffing in pain and fear, made nervous by your presence. You approach, careful of the shovel-like antlers, retrieve your knife and put it out of its misery with a swift, clean thrust. Brown eyes, once inhabited by the shine of intelligence which all mammals possess, slowly become dull until they're staring into nothingness. It isn’t murder, but it doesn’t feel like mercy either—in the Green Machine there is no mercy. Blood sticks to the blade when you pull it out of the cadaver, and more continues to leak out of the wound you created. You think of Jack, of what would have occurred had the last dinner of this life ever taken place. Of what you would have done, willingly, to run away with him. The world spins; your ears ring. You begin to sweat, to shiver, and fall to your knees.

When you come home, hours later, she awaits you with dinner and no questions.

It's been months since the last nightmare, but he comes back to you in your dream, swirling black claws stretched out to hold onto you.

Hooves clatter in the distance. You can't make out if it's the dead moose or the feathered stag. Maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe they are one and the same and you killed them both.

You run, but you can't escape. In seconds he catches up and grabs you. His pointed fingers twine around your neck and you close your eyes, ready to die.

But you don't. The creature holds onto you, looking at you impassively, but he doesn't hurt you. His name tumbles from your lips, the first time in two years, and he begins dragging you off— in the direction of clattering hooves. You don’t fight against him.

You wake with your heart pounding in your chest, with his name etched onto your tongue, and she's there, awake. You tell her of him then, just enough, and still she loves you. In that moment you're certain that you don’t deserve any of this, especially not her, and when it ends—as it will, someday—it’ll be your own fault.


	3. Year Three

The third year is the hardest.

Some days you manage to forget entirely. Beneath a pile of red maple leaves, in the forest next to your stream, he lies hidden. Just the faintest brush of wind could lay him bare, and occasionally a draft manages to get in. A sentence, a taste, a pattern: uncontrolled reminders. She has learned to deal with you and your sudden mood swings. Takes the boy to his grandparents for the weekend and leaves you and the dogs alone for a few days. You need the silence; you need the time to think. You're both certain that no matter what, the relationship will hold.

Once, in early summer, she is working in the kitchen, wearing the peppermint green dress with pink floral print you bought her for your first anniversary. She looks gorgeous in it and she knows it, flirting with you through glances and touches.

The boy is at a friend’s. She's making dinner—something special, just for you and her. When she starts cutting the herbs, you hug her from behind, her curves fitting against you in the most wonderful way. You breathe in deeply. Rosemary, savory and thyme. The draft tickles her neck and she giggles in the way you love. Then she curses—a small cut on her finger.

Oregano, marjoram, basil and blood.

It reminds you of him, so instantly, so painfully, that tears threaten to brim in your eyes. Him in the kitchen; the two of you, cooking together. The room’s elements adjust until everything smells like him, like blood.

Blood on his dining table; Randall Tier presented there, twice, his blood on your knuckles.

Blood before the house, in the pantry and in the basement; Alana, Jack and Beverly’s blood on your hands.

Blood in the kitchen; Abigail’s and your own blood gushing from your wounds through your fingers, inexorable.

Blood throughout his house. Blood in your meals and your conversations and your becoming. Blood in his eyes and his lips and the valentine he left for you.

You lift her up to the kitchen counter. She looks at you, confused but not disinclined, and you push up her peppermint green dress with pink floral print to take her right there, letting yourself be embraced by arms and legs and warm, dewy innocence. You hide your face in the bow of her clavicle—not from God, but from her.

In some other world you are a better man, one who doesn’t close his eyes pretending that his wife is someone else. One who successfully fought against his urges, not giving in, not giving up. One who would react with sickness to your thoughts; one who would be shocked at your associations.

In some other world she's him. This is the world you let yourself dream of, for just a blissful moment.

You feel dirty afterward and foolish. “Sweet Man,” she calls you, breathlessly, and she's so, so wrong.

Every time he scabs over, you peel at him until he feels fresh and raw in your mind again. He refuses to scar. You refuse to let him scar. Time does not, after all, heal all wounds.

But then he always had a weird relationship with time.

For a few weeks you're able to resist, then you take his notebook out of the drawer, figuring out the calculations he wrote down when he was watching over you.

Time travel, of course, and you think it’s strange. How little time you spent together, overall, and how much time you simply yearned to be in each other’s company again. The consummation of your life, triggered by chance and a few months consisting of a real connection to somebody else.

It’ll never be like this with her. You love each other, but it’s almost shallow in comparison, lacking that holistic quality. In whatever capacity he was able to, he liked all of your horrible, fucked-up—and, in his eyes, effulgent— fragments. An addictive feeling, to be understood; unique and, no matter how shameful the admission, joyful in its best moments.

You lock the notebook away. Spend time with her. She tries teaching you how to clog dance; she tries to enthuse you for her music. You watch the night sky together and point out the stellar constellations. You bond with her son. Teach him what your father taught you: how to fish, how to fix a motor. You build a water clock together. The boy’s slow to warm up to you, but you're getting there. You don’t dream about him so often now. You're getting there.

A letter arrives, forwarded to you by the Bureau. You don’t open it. You don’t even want to look at it for too long, lest you break the seal and summon the first harbinger. It goes into a drawer, the same one the book resides in, and you try to forget its existence. Impossible—you know precisely what it means. You have seen the articles. Have found yourself, automatically and just for a minute, slipping into the new killer’s mind. Too dangerous. For her, for you, for what you’ve built. Not what you do anymore. Not what you want to do anymore.

It comes as no surprise when, subsequently, Jack follows the letter to your home, all dressed in black like Death himself and looking just as bleak. Here to tear you away. A trial.

She wants you to stay but knows that you need to go. It'll change you. You tell her as much. She believes in you. Her interest in you remains, even now, largely inexplicable.

Before you toss it into the fire, you read his letter, the words vibrating through your skull. Madness awaits you that night, the last time you sleep at home. He stands among the bodies of your dead family, inviting you over. Without thinking, you join him.

You go with Jack. Make yourself look again. Familiar surroundings and desperation after no initial breakthrough give rise to the temptation of seeing him again. It’s possible. Advisable even, if you want to save some lives and are selfless enough not to care about your own. Or maybe it has nothing to do with selflessness. Maybe you just miss him too much.

You visit the Cappella Palatina for the first time in three years, ready to test your strength, the devotion to your family. His gaze is piercing, as dark and ferocious as in your dreams. You can feel it already—the brightness of the flame baiting you through its nightmarish beauty. You fight the urge to clutch your belly when you say the words that will open the gates again.

“Hello, Dr. Lecter.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come visit me on my [tumblr](http://www.pka42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
